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Memoirs & Diaries - The Best 500 Cockney War Stories - Modern Conveniences and Other Stories

Published in London
in 1921, The Best 500 Cockney War Stories
comprised, in the words of its newspaper publisher (The London Evening
News) "a remembering and retelling of those war days when laughter
sometimes saved men's reason".

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The collection of short
memoirs, some 500 in total, is
divided into five categories - Action, Lull, Hospital,
High Seas and Here and There. This page contains five
stories from Lull,
led by Modern Conveniences.

Other sections within the collection can
be accessed
using the sidebar to the right.

Modern Conveniences

A Tommy plugging it along the Arras-Doullens road in the pouring rain. "Ole
Bill," the omnibus, laden with Cockneys going towards the line, overtakes him.

TOMMY: "Sitting room inside, mate?"

COCKNEY ON Bus: "No, but
there's a barf-room upstairs!"

George T. Coles (ex-Lieut.,
R.A.F.), 17 Glebe Crescent, Hendon, N.W.4

The Trench Fleet

A certain section of the line, just in front of Levantie, being a comparatively
peaceful and quiet spot, was held by a series of posts at intervals of anything
up to three hundred yards, which made the task of
bringing up rations an unhappy one, especially as the trenches in this sector
always contained about four feet of water.

One November night a miserable ration party was wading through the thin slimy
mud. The sentry at the top of the communication trench, hearing the grousing,
splashing, and clanking of tins, and knowing full well who was approaching,
issued the usual challenge, as per Army Orders: "'Alt! 'Oo goes there?"

Out of the darkness came the reply, in a weary voice: "Admiral Jellicoe an'
'is blinkin' fleet."

A dark cloudy night in front of Lens, two patrols of the 19th London Regt., one
led by Lieut. R-, the other by Corporal B-, were crawling along the barbed wire
entanglements in No Man's Land, towards each other.

Two tin hats met with a clang, which at once drew the attention of Fritz.

Lieut. R- sat back in the mud, while snipers' and machine-gun bullets whistled
past, and in a cool voice said, "Why don't you ring your perishing bell?"

On the afternoon of Christmas Day, 1915, three pipers, of whom I was one, went
into the trenches at Loos, and after playing at our Battalion H.Q., proceeded to
the front line, where we played some selections for the benefit of the Germans,
whose trenches were very close at this point.

Probably thinking that an attack
was imminent, they sent up innumerable Verey lights, but, deciding later that we
had no such intention, they responded by singing and playing on mouth-organs.

Having finished our performance, my friends and I proceeded on our way back, and
presently, passing some men of another regiment, were asked by one of them: "Was that you playin' them bloomin' toobs?" We admitted it.